Tooniverse is a cable TV station for cartoons in Korea. I made a series of station IDs for the Tooniverse as a coursework term project. When I think of 3D animations, I think of the laborious toil including modeling, animating, lighting and rendering. Especially, animating was an endless process of trial and error to me. This time, I wanted to try some 3D animations which require no animation keys manually set. I did this in two ways.

FIg. 1. Concepts for the Station ID series 1
     First, I made a rigid body simulation using physics engine of the 3D studio MAX. I just made the camera fly through the space of dynamic simulation. Stage stuffs such as balls and letter blocks were dynamically simulated according to their initial positions. Reactor, the 3D physics engine of the 3D studio MAX, successfully solved the dynamic rigid body simulation.
     Second, I reused motion capture data to animate a dancing character. I just refined an existing motion capture data to fit on a dwarf character. Again this time, I just made the camera fly through the dancing scene.



     For both animations, I composed a short music to add some amusement on the scene. The music was composed and recorded by GIGA sampler a software MIDI program. In this project, I had a lot fun testing simulations and tuning motion capture data. I spent no time doing tedious labor key-framing.


Fig. 2. Still images for Tooniverse Station ID 1 - Rigid body simulation


Fig. 3. Still images for Tooniverse Station ID 2 - Motion capture






Tooniverse Station ID series (2003)